The Curiosities of Janice Lowry

Every artist’s intent is to lead a full life of image-making, leaving a legacy of inspirational work. A prolific teacher, collage artist, painter, sculptor, and documentarian, Janice Lowry (1957-2009) succeeded at both goals. Her vibrant body of work continues to resonate with friends, family, students, and admirers all over the world. Former student and friend Mark Ryden contributes a heartfelt preface.
Lowry’s diary in 126 volumes, which she kept from age eleven, is in the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art — with pages featured here incorporating Lowry’s own voice into the text. Her sculptures and assemblages, drawing from Joseph Cornell’s shadow boxes, are surreal 3-D worlds made of a variety of materials — from worn paint, imperfect wood, and plastic doll parts to string, table legs, playing cards and deer antlers. Mixed-media paintings reinterpret 19th century cabinet cards, and dada-esque collages superimpose old and new elements, from 1950s domestic advertisements to celestial imagery.
The Curiosities of Janice Lowry is both an epitaph and an insightful look into the life and influences that shaped this intensely creative individual and is published as a celebration of Lowry’s career retrospective at the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, California.

About the Author / Artist

Janice Lowry

Janice Lowry (1946 – 2009) was born in Phoenix, Arizona. She earned a bachelor’s degree at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 1979 and received her master’s degree a year later.

She continued to pursue her own art and self-expression throughout her life as well as teaching at Cypress College and the Art Institute of Orange County. In October of 2007, journals she kept since age 11 (in 126 volumes) were accepted into the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.